Once she was gone, I turned back to my family and noticed Hawk and Emma snickering. “What is it now?”
Emma was laughing too hard to speak, so Hawk said it. “Jebediah Sunday signed a ‘friendship agreement’ saying he could continue growing his crops on Abraham Pond’s land for ‘one hundred fruitful harvests,’ with a certain percentage of the Sundays’ ‘yield from our friendship’ to be paid to Abraham’s heirs. That lawyer guy has a note here asking how many fruitful harvests there’ve been since 1836 and whether or not the Sundays have been delivering apples to the Ponds.”
“I’m not giving Luke Williams my apples,” I snapped, drawing way too much attention.
I felt fury boiling up inside me, coiling and kicking like a living thing, as if all the restless anger I felt about all the shit I couldn’t control in my life had coalesced into something too enormous to ignore.
As it happened, Hawk had been right. It was possible to feel very, very angry over a tiny parcel of land.
Incensed, really.
Infuriated beyond the telling.
My face heated, and I realized I couldn’t stay here for one of Little Pippin Hollow’s interminable town meetings.
I needed to leave.
“He’d probably like our apples,” Emma said, tapping a fingertip to her chin. “At least… he might like Gage and Knox’s apples, if you catch my meaning.”
“I don’t,” I spat, not wanting to hear about Luke Williams and anyone’s apples.
Knox got a knowing look on his face. “I have the pickup line already ready.”
I shot Knox a look. “Don’t say it. Do. Not. Say. It.”
“How do you like them apples?” Knox said dutifully before all four of them lost their collective shit and I stormed out into the night.
There’d never been a clearer sign that tonight was the night for getting utterly and completely wasted.
And I knew just the place for it.
When I hit the cool night air, I stopped long enough to take a deep breath and try to calm the hell down so I didn’t flash an angry scowl at all of the townspeople still filtering into the building. It was just long enough for Knox to catch up to me.
“I’m sorry. I was just trying to introduce a little levity to the situation. We don’t know how serious this is yet, Webb, so take a breath.”
“It’s fine. I just need a drink. And I need to not sit through a bunch of bullshit about some ridiculous clause in someotherdude’s idiot ancestor’s will, and how a developer wants to pave paradise and put up a… a vacation resort. I could give two shits about Fogg Peak when I’m busy worrying about Sunday Orchard, and I’m really fucking tired of random-ass documents from almost three hundred years ago determining the course of people’s lives today.”
“Fine, then let me go with you,” Knox offered. “I’ll tell Gage?—”
“No.” I shook my head and took a step toward the door. “Thanks, but I want to be alone.”
Knox laid a restraining hand on my arm. “Webb, I know you’re angry. I don’t blame you. But you have family. You have an attorney. We have resources. We’ll fight this. Please don’t do anything that’s gonna get you in trouble or hurt your custody chances. And sure as shit don’t go anywhere near Luke Williams.”
Until he said the words, the thought hadn’t entered my mind. But as soon as he did, it was all I could think about. My jaw worked side to side. Luke Williams could certainly use a piece of my mind right about now.
“Think of Aiden,” he said softly.
Was he kidding?
I jabbed a finger toward him. “Fuck you, Knox. I onlyeverthink of Aiden.”
Aiden was the reason I was so damn angry. Angry because I worked my ass off to give him stability and a good home, despite his mother leaving us when he was four years old. Angry because I’d spent my life propagating varietals in that orchard so they could be enjoyed by Aiden and his kids and grandkids one day, and now someone was trying to snatch that stability away.
“I’m going to the Bugle,” I said flatly, motioning across the empty town common to where the lights of the bar shone. “Come and get me when you’re done.”
A wallof welcome heat greeted me when I stepped inside, along with the usual sounds of a hockey game in progress on the big screen and a country music song playing over the speakers.
I hung my jacket on a hook, remembering to duck my head under the low doorframe and touch the brass Unity Bugle on the plaque by the door for good luck, then headed directly for the alcohol.
